Once formal pictures were done, there was nothing left to do but wait for our guests to arrive before starting the ceremony. Our entire wedding party went back to the bridal cottage to wait in the cool, air conditioned room while everyone else had to sweat it out and wait outside. Sorry to our wedding guests!

Ceremony decor in lieu of an arch

Unfortunately, August in Hawaii is hot and humid, and with a ceremony start time of 4:00 PM, the sun was still up and not quite ready to set. The one saving grace was that our ceremony area was shaded by trees and near the water, so the occasional breeze was hopefully keeping our guests cool. And even if it wasn’t, no one complained to me about it. #BridePerks

I honestly don’t know if our ceremony started on time (watch didn’t really go with my outfit); I just did whatever our wedding coordinator told me to do. Since we rehearsed the day before, once we were told it was go time we all got into our assigned positions and the procession started.

After my bridal party made their full walk down the aisle, it was just me and my dad standing at the top of the stairs waiting to make our way down. At that moment, a wave of emotions hit me and I started crying. From our bird’s eye point of view, I could see all our friends and family, wedding party, and most importantly Mr. Eel waiting for me. I truly felt the love and support of everyone there, and the emotions were overwhelming. My dad told me to calm down and breathe, and once I was settled we started down the aisle.

Our nephew, and ring bearer: When he got to the end of the aisle, he ran to Mr. Eel to give him a hug.

Pro tip: When walking down a staircase-type aisle, have your escort quietly whisper when steps are coming. Since our stairs varied in length, my wedding coordinator instructed my dad to whisper where the steps were so that I wouldn’t have to look down. This made sure our photographers were able to capture photos of me looking straight ahead and smiling.

I walked down the aisle to “A Thousand Years” by The Piano Guys. It’s a pretty cliche song choice, but it has special meaning to us and a funny backstory,* and I knew I wanted all instrumentals for our ceremony.

Pure, wedded bliss

Mr. Eel—those are happy tears, I promise! 🙂

Brother Eel was our officiant, and I must say, he did an amazing job. He got ordained online for our wedding, and even though this was his first and only wedding (so far), he knocked it out of the park. We wrote our own vows, which I won’t go into too many details about here since (spoiler alert!) you’ll be able to hear them when I post our highlight video once all my recaps are done. And trust me, you won’t want to miss our highlight video by the extremely talented Aria Studios.

What the front, my veil is crooked!

We said our I dos, exchanged rings, and kissed, and the ceremony was over. It was time for the fun stuff and what we’d all been waiting for—our reception party!

*On one of our first dates, Mr. Eel and I were supposed to see the newest Twilight (I think the second one?), but it was sold out and the only other movie at the same time was J. Edgar. We eventually got to see Twilight, but years later Mr. Eel confessed to me that he didn’t really want to see Twilight that night but agreed to it since he was still on the “dating high” and absolutely hated J. Edgar.